Grinding more than dazzling, is this Canadian team good enough to win gold?
It took a good 30 or 40 minutes of game time to understand exactly what we were watching from Canada in its Olympic men’s hockey semifinal versus the eternally pesky Finland.
Was it a flat choke job from a team wilting without captain Sidney Crosby? That’s how it looked after Finland jumped ahead 2-0 on a one-touch power-play snipe from Mikko Rantanen and a thrilling shorthanded breakaway tally from Erik Haula.
Was it a Canadian team dripping with desperation and increasingly reliant on a tiny contingent of superstars to do all the work? Things were trending that way, too, with Macklin Celebrini, Connor McDavid and one of Tom Wilson and Nathan MacKinnon seemingly the only forward unit generating high-percentage looks and creating danger off the rush.
Was it a team improperly built, featuring a few too many lunchpail two-way forwards and keep-it-simple defensemen, flipping pucks from the point through traffic and praying for deflections against a smothering opponent?
Canada exhibited all those characteristics at varying points through the semifinal. But something seemed to crystallize as Canada began its relentless push to tie the game when trailing 2-0 – and outshot Finland 31-9 across the second and third periods of a come-from-behind 3-2 victory.
Given what we saw against Czechia and again Friday against Finland, it’s pretty clear the “best team ever” talk was premature, no matter what happens in the gold medal game. This version of Canada likely won’t hold a candle to the top-to-bottom Hall of Fame talent of the 2002 and 2010 teams or the perfect defensive suffocation of the 2014 team. But the 2026 Canadian roster seemingly has embraced its flaws and found its identity.
To understand what Canada has, let’s first litigate what we now know it lacks after five games in Milan. Aside from the superpowered top forward trio, which generated 16 of Canada’s shots on Friday, and an electric No. 1 power-play unit, this team lacks dynamism. The absence of deadly shooting forwards such as Connor Bedard and Mark Scheifele, a booming howitzer from the point in Evan Bouchard or a swashbuckling puck rusher on defense such as Matthew Schaefer is pretty clear now. When Celebrini, McDavid, MacKinnon and Cale Makar aren’t on the ice, it doesn’t feel like Canada is a threat to score from anywhere at any time, and that was apparent as the team trudged uphill trying to find momentum early against Finland.
It’s a strange observation to make given the “depth” on this team includes a 102-point scorer in Mitch Marner, a 90-point scorer in Brandon Hagel, a future Hall of Famer in Brad Marchand, a 57-goal scorer in Sam Reinhart, a Conn Smythe Trophy winner in Sam Bennett and so on. But our eyes tell us that’s simply been the case in this tournament. Canada is built more for a two-month crusade through the Stanley Cup playoffs than the heartstopping do-or-die single elimination format of the Olympics, and that’s why it has felt at times over the past two games that this team has been crossing its fingers waiting for the next 17-97-29 shift, knowing that will be the next real chance at a goal. Those three continue to lap the team in scoring chance contributions, per JFreshHockey’s data.
But maybe the key all along was to accept, even though it doesn’t make sense given how many All-Stars and first-liners play on this team, that GM Doug Armstrong built the group to grind more than dazzle. Once Canada embraced that in the semis, it worked, even if it wasn’t always pretty to watch.
Not long after bend-but-don’t-break goaltender Jordan Binnington held the deficit at 2-1 with a crucial save on Anton Lundell in tight, the tying goal at 10:34 third epitomized Canada’s eureka moment. Coach Jon Cooper had dropped Wilson down to a Maniac Line alongside Brad Marchand and Sam Bennett, uniting three of this generation’s most controversial players, and they began to bludgeon the Finns with energetic, abrasive shifts. Marchand created havoc in front of Finnish goaltender Juuse Saros, barreling into him after being shoved by Haula, before Wilson fed Shea Theodore for a blistering slapper from the point that beat Saros glove-side.
“I think everybody in the big picture is expecting one line to score all the time and the other one not to, and it’s only fitting that the work ethic of that other group was the line that scored the goal for us,” Cooper told reporters after the win. “They just tilt the ice in different ways. And everything’s not always about what you put in the net and how many scoring chances you have. Some of them, it’s about intimidation, leaning on teams, making them think, making them tired, and setting shifts for the next group. And that’s what that line was fabulous for.”
It wasn’t a highlight-reel tally, but it capped off a sequence of simple, grindingly effective hockey, and Canada’s churning legs and forecheck gradually wore the Finns down to a nub, with Niko Mikkola taking an ill-timed high sticking penalty with 2:35 to go in the third, leading to MacKinnon winning the game with a seeing-eye one-timer on the power play.
Yes, Canada still got lifts from its key skill components when it mattered, with Reinhart tipping home a Makar shot for the first goal and MacKinnon notching the third in the 3-2 win. But the momentum turned when the “bottom” of the lineup found an identity of cycling and firing as many pucks from the point as possible.
The question now is whether this blue-collar identity is symptomatic of a team that isn’t quite gold material – is it a good thing when 24 of your 39 shots come from the perimeter? – or if we’re about to see the best version of it yet now that these guys understand what the sum of their parts is. Canada still feels strangely top-heavy, perilously close to a one-line team, and its D-corps has struggled to move the puck with pace…but the depth found a way to help in its own way during the second half of Friday’s game.
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